I think the best thing anyone can do for their group, with any profession or trait alignment, is to pick a role and stick to it. If you are support, say so in the beginning. If you are DPS or tanky, or CC; just say so.

DPS benefits speed runs, but leave it to your group to decide if they want a specific team build or not.

Lastly, I see a lot of responses in this thread ignoring one of my main points: "good enough is good enough" is a pretty lame attitude to have. Just because content is easy is no excuse to slack off, or to intentionally gimp yourself.

The problem with this mentality is that you're approaching the game like it's work. You're working the game, not really playing it.

I understand that, for some people, doing speed runs actually is the fun of it. But for those of us who don't find it any more fun to do a run in 6 minutes as opposed to 10, good enough is good enough. If I can make my ridiculous but fun build work, without being a serious hindrance to my team, why shouldn't I? Am I not entitled to having fun in a game? I wouldn't take said build into a speed run, because I know that build would considerably slow down the group. But in an ordinary dungeon run group, I don't think people are seriously going to mind unless my build is getting myself downed very often.

Stop thinking of the game like it's a job and you might start to enjoy it more.

That said, I do agree with a lot of your OP. I just think it shouldn't be applied to all situations; perhaps only speed runs.

The problem with this mentality is that you're approaching the game like it's work. You're working the game, not really playing it.

I understand that, for some people, doing speed runs actually is the fun of it. But for those of us who don't find it any more fun to do a run in 6 minutes as opposed to 10, good enough is good enough. If I can make my ridiculous but fun build work, without being a serious hindrance to my team, why shouldn't I? Am I not entitled to having fun in a game? I wouldn't take said build into a speed run, because I know that build would considerably slow down the group. But in an ordinary dungeon run group, I don't think people are seriously going to mind unless my build is getting myself downed very often.

Stop thinking of the game like it's a job and you might start to enjoy it more.

That said, I do agree with a lot of your OP. I just think it shouldn't be applied to all situations; perhaps only speed runs.

I feel that your position is very common. However, there are several threads on the various forums about how "hard" Arah P4 is. Or how "hard" CoE is. The "good enough is good enough" crowd and the "nerf these dungeons/bosses" crowd have a lot of overlap. I just wonder if perhaps some folks wouldnt have to cry for nerfs if they weren't running bad builds?

And secondly, this thread isn't about super casual people running their condition damage sword build happily. It's more about ostensibly good players who post garbage builds claiming they are great, and who are deliberately misleading people. The people they are misleading are players who WANT to run good, optimized builds, not the people who don't care about builds. I find deliberate misinformation to be pretty offensive.

I feel that your position is very common. However, there are several threads on the various forums about how "hard" Arah P4 is. Or how "hard" CoE is. The "good enough is good enough" crowd and the "nerf these dungeons/bosses" crowd have a lot of overlap. I just wonder if perhaps some folks wouldnt have to cry for nerfs if they weren't running bad builds?

And secondly, this thread isn't about super casual people running their condition damage sword build happily. It's more about ostensibly good players who post garbage builds claiming they are great, and who are deliberately misleading people. The people they are misleading are players who WANT to run good, optimized builds, not the people who don't care about builds. I find deliberate misinformation to be pretty offensive.

I can fully agree to that. When I'm doing a dungeon I'm unfamiliar with, I try to be on top of my game and run the most efficient or survivable build I can. Once I'm more familiar with the encounters and know how to handle the situations, I switch it up--if I'm not in a group that's pressed for time/efficiency, that is. I'll definitely agree, though, that part of the problem isn't necessarily the difficulty of dungeons, but the lack of player skill. I've run into a lot of players who don't know how to play their profession wisely and make the most of what they can offer to the group, but it isn't a huge problem... until we're doing a dungeon that said players don't know (or sometimes ones they do), and they get swatted down like flies.

However, that isn't always the fault of those players, as you pointed out. I was one of those players running a hugely inefficient build when I got my first character (warrior) to 80. I had read here on gw2guru about the shout healing build and how much it would bring to the group. I thought it was a great set up, and ran it for quite a while. But throughout the dungeons I was doing I found myself going down incredibly often, likely due to the toughness I had built up, and the lack of defensive skills the warrior has. As a result, I wasn't really contributing much to the group other than paltry heals for half of the group every 20 seconds.

I switched to a dps focused build largely relying on, you betcha, strength, arms, and discipline. I'm suddenly going down far less often, doing a lot of damage, and my group isn't really at a terrible loss not having the healing I was providing.

All in all, I much agree with your standpoint. Especially on the subject of "Superman"-ing, traits/attributes, and working with the game mechanics. I can't count the number of times I've been in an AC run and watched someone get taken down in seconds by Kholer's pull--multiple times. I let the first time slide, but seriously? Come on people, learn to dodge.

I feel that your position is very common. However, there are several threads on the various forums about how "hard" Arah P4 is. Or how "hard" CoE is. The "good enough is good enough" crowd and the "nerf these dungeons/bosses" crowd have a lot of overlap. I just wonder if perhaps some folks wouldnt have to cry for nerfs if they weren't running bad builds?

And secondly, this thread isn't about super casual people running their condition damage sword build happily. It's more about ostensibly good players who post garbage builds claiming they are great, and who are deliberately misleading people. The people they are misleading are players who WANT to run good, optimized builds, not the people who don't care about builds. I find deliberate misinformation to be pretty offensive.

Also, you have to take into consideration people who are inexperienced and trying to find an efficient build to play the best they can. They come on here not knowing any better, and they're shown a bunch of fancy, semiprofessional looking pictures and graphics in a thread about a build that isn't nearly as good as it makes itself out to be.

I was originally playing a ranger as my main, and then decided I liked my warrior a lot more. I came to this forum numerous times to try and get on the right track with an effective build and fortunately had threads full of proof showing why some of the math in these "super survivability/extreme damage" builds were flat out wrong. However, if I had been one of the first to see them, god knows how much gold I'd have spent on runes and sigils and gems and all that only to set myself up for failure.

Dungeons are dodge checks and dps checks. The better you are at both the faster and smoother your dungeons will be, and that is the point.

I submit this is the problem with your argument. It is a very narrow set of assumptions that looks good on a spreadsheet but doesn't reflect the actual circumstances of game mechanics and the medium itself.

I submit the following counterpoints you have not in any way addressed in this thread that myself and others have stated or implied:

A) I would agree with you if you were just saying there's got to be a certain threshold of DPS to clear efficiently. It's not a matter of I do lots of damage or I do negligible damage rather it's do I do enough damage. So let's both throw that strawman out the window right now.

And if I understand your argument correctly you are saying either everyone's DPS has to be maximized, or specifically Warrior DPS has to be maximized. I just couldn't disagree more because we are talking about a group, where the sum of the DPS is more than the total of its parts due to synergies and the different ways members will apply DPS.

Look in isolation you're right, it's better to kill it in fewer attacks, clearly. But it is not that simple because our Warrior is not acting alone. I'm going to just make this up to illustrate the point clearly, it's really much more complex than this but this is the concept.

Your warrior and and a condition necro team up to kill a mob. The condition damage will kill the mob in 10 ticks by itself. The warrior can swing and hit one time per tick, but it will take 4 swings to solo kill it. Assume they act with perfect simultaneous behavior.

Huh, that's interesting, in about the same amount of time it's still dead despite the warrior having much higher DPS.

Okay what if we lower DPS, so it takes 5 swings?

Tick 1: 30% dead
Tick 2: 60% dead
Tick 3: 90% dead
Tick 4: 120% dead

So clearly we can't just ignore DPS. But what would it take to make things more efficient? Let's raise the DPS to the point it takes a mere 2 swings. Bear in mind this implies the warrior does 5 times as much damage as the necromancer, so this is like the least damaging condimancer ever compared to the most glass cannon warrior ever.

Tick 1: 60% dead
Tick 2: 120% dead

Now I made those numbers up, but the point is, whatever the numbers actually are in reality, there's a big slice of DPS range where the results are about the same as far as time spent to kill the mob, and it takes a huge, absolutely huge, relative performance boost in raw damage that possibly doesn't exist in this game to make the killing signifcantly faster. Clearly there's a range where the results suffer and a range where they're better, but without looking at everything else in play we don't know where those ranges are.

Your stack DPS regardless paradigm is therefore simply flawed because the mechanics of the game allow for the possibility someone who does less damage may actually be just as high performing.

Furthermore even if we give your argument the best case scenario that everyone follows your paradigm, a DPS range where it just doesn't matter how much extra DPS you have will still emerge. If we take it to the ridiculous end and assume the warrior can kill it in half of an attack (ie he does double the damage the mob can sustain), the extra DPS is just that much more of a waste.

Finally, even if you think all the preceding is BS, we still can't quantify the effects of a loss in utility as a result of DPS stacking. I can't prove to you mathematically it isn't worth losing because it's not quantifiable, but that's still a valid opinion. You don't have to agree but the existence of another sound paradigm that may be more efficient than yours is certainly possible.

Dodge is great but you are really overstating it. Block, Daze, Blind, Knockback, Knockdown, Cripple or Immobilize, Stun, all just as effective when used properly. Dodge is what you use when you go "oops I either failed to or I simply can't Stun/Block/etc. this" moments because Dodge is your nearly universal counter, you want to save that for unexpected things.

C) You're coming from some hypothetical place where nothing ever goes wrong ever, nothing glitches, no one suddenly disconnects, nothing unexpected ever happens, nobody is new to that dungeon, no one fouls up, a cat never walks across the keyboard, etc. Everyone knows everything in the dungeon and times dodging perfectly and has no other form of defense.

Nikephoros, on 09 February 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

Lastly, I see a lot of responses in this thread ignoring one of my main points: "good enough is good enough" is a pretty lame attitude to have. Just because content is easy is no excuse to slack off, or to intentionally gimp yourself.

You're missing the points that:

1. The benefit of doing something has to be worth the cost. If you spend 10% of game time in instanced PvE, it's not worth optimizing to that. If you spend 90% of your time in the dungeon however, you're a masochist, but you should probably optimize for it.

2. The proposal would in my mind be highly effective than having no strategy at all, of that I have no doubt, but there's other effective solutions. The cat that walked across the keyboard and wrecked your glass cannon party can be shorn of its epidermis in a variety of methods.

Everything was going good in the OP until it got off the rails with a bizarre world view talking about fallacies...

People look to crowd sources to get an idea of what other people are doing but in the end some builds are just boring to play even if they are the best dps or the most amazing force multiplier available for a class. I'm sorry but the whole entire point of playing the game is to have fun, not to burn through every single piece of the game as efficiently as possible. I am sorry but I do not define "winning" as conforming to the most efficient build and doing the more efficient set of actions over and over with the goal of going through virtual content as quickly as possible. If you want to do tasks where time is money and doing things quicker and more efficiently means something then I suggest getting a job and not turning a video game into some kind of job replacement. F that nonsense.

Fun is different things to different people. If your friends care so little for you that they don't understand that you could do XYZ to be max efficient but you are less bored if you do WYZ instead then you should find new friends because they those type of people are just using you. Using a crowd source tested build can be the most fun too so I'm not saying conformity is bad just saying that having fun with what you are playing should be the goal for everyone playing.

Nikephoros, on 06 February 2013 - 10:20 PM, said:

Just because something is easy, does not mean you should gimp yourself by playing a suboptimal build. In an organized group, that means you are slowing down your friends. In a pug, you are wasting peoples’ time because you’re too selfish to put in an honest effort.

your argument is a fallacy (irony). an honest effort does not require conforming to a concensus "best build". selfishness can mean insisting everyone conform to consensus best builds in order to not waste your time.

Nikephoros, on 06 February 2013 - 10:20 PM, said:

Easy content, rather than an excuse to slack off, is an encouragement to go faster. Sure, any crappy build can do CoF1 in 10 minutes. But only efficient builds can do it in 6. Why are you satisfied with mediocrity? Why is “good enough” good enough? You shouldn’t be, and it isn’t. This is a loser mentality. Winner mentality is pushing yourself to excel even when you don’t have to.

It's a video game, not an e-sport. I can understand your passion but it is a very myopic world view. Playing a game to have fun and having a fun by playing that game is winning if that was your goal. It's possible to be a loser if you set out to play a game and in the end only found a work replacement.

In the end the OP might have been best aimed at a group of like-minded people like his guild instead of aiming it at the general population. I was in complete agreement about warriors being best as force multiplies and bringing team utility to the table but cannot support the rest of it. In the end having fun is the thing I place highest priority on and I refuse to let GW2 become a work replacement for me. I love to push myself and take on hard content but I reject the elitism the the OP delved into in the end.

Wow, did you just compare warrior dps to a necro dps? I stopped reading after that. I cant believe you just compared the one of the lowest dps class with the highest dps class lol. Your "ticks" aren't going to kill anything faster than a warrior's auto attack. Stop killing those rabbits / underlevelled mobs.

This thread is about being "as efficient as possible." If you aren't in that mindset, don't bother making a counter argument for how you can still clear content w/o being optimal. Ofc it's doable, but that's not the topic at hand.

Wow, did you just compare warrior dps to a necro dps? I stopped reading after that. I cant believe you just compared the one of the lowest dps class with the highest dps class lol. Your "ticks" aren't going to kill anything faster than a warrior's auto attack. Stop killing those rabbits / underlevelled mobs.

This thread is about being "as efficient as possible." If you aren't in that mindset, don't bother making a counter argument for how you can still clear content w/o being optimal. Ofc it's doable, but that's not the topic at hand.

Now I made those numbers up, but the point is, whatever the numbers actually are in reality, there's a big slice of DPS range where the results are about the same as far as time spent to kill the mob, and it takes a huge, absolutely huge, relative performance boost in raw damage that possibly doesn't exist in this game to make the killing signifcantly faster. Clearly there's a range where the results suffer and a range where they're better, but without looking at everything else in play we don't know where those ranges are.

I understand your point and it make sense. But people don't want more DPS in their group for small mobs that you can kill in 2-5 attack. Without good DPS, you gonna put a lot more time against champion and boss or against large group of mobs.

I understand your point and it make sense. But people don't want more DPS in their group for small mobs that you can kill in 2-5 attack. Without good DPS, you gonna put a lot more time against champion and boss or against large group of mobs.

I too acknowledge the point you are making. However the phenomena I point out above still holds regardless of whether it is trash or a champ. The numbers just fall out differently.

I am questioning the logic of the OP. The conclusions originally stated follow from the premise of the argument. I am just pointing out reasons why I think the premise is so narrow the resulting argument made is not meaningful in terms of execution in game.

Devil's advocacy as it were. I hold no stake in this other than it piqued my interest.

However the phenomena I point out above still holds regardless of whether it is trash or a champ. The numbers just fall out differently.

Your right the phenomena still occurs. But the if against trash mobs, the phenomena give only a small avantage to high dps, the gap in time from a high vs a low dps just keep growing more and more as the mobs have more and more hp. Rapidly the phenomena you explain just don't have any significance.

I submit this is the problem with your argument. It is a very narrow set of assumptions that looks good on a spreadsheet but doesn't reflect the actual circumstances of game mechanics and the medium itself.

I submit the following counterpoints you have not in any way addressed in this thread that myself and others have stated or implied:

A) I would agree with you if you were just saying there's got to be a certain threshold of DPS to clear efficiently. It's not a matter of I do lots of damage or I do negligible damage rather it's do I do enough damage. So let's both throw that strawman out the window right now.

And if I understand your argument correctly you are saying either everyone's DPS has to be maximized, or specifically Warrior DPS has to be maximized. I just couldn't disagree more because we are talking about a group, where the sum of the DPS is more than the total of its parts due to synergies and the different ways members will apply DPS.

Look in isolation you're right, it's better to kill it in fewer attacks, clearly. But it is not that simple because our Warrior is not acting alone. I'm going to just make this up to illustrate the point clearly, it's really much more complex than this but this is the concept.

Your warrior and and a condition necro team up to kill a mob. The condition damage will kill the mob in 10 ticks by itself. The warrior can swing and hit one time per tick, but it will take 4 swings to solo kill it. Assume they act with perfect simultaneous behavior.

Huh, that's interesting, in about the same amount of time it's still dead despite the warrior having much higher DPS.

Okay what if we lower DPS, so it takes 5 swings?

Tick 1: 30% dead
Tick 2: 60% dead
Tick 3: 90% dead
Tick 4: 120% dead

So clearly we can't just ignore DPS. But what would it take to make things more efficient? Let's raise the DPS to the point it takes a mere 2 swings. Bear in mind this implies the warrior does 5 times as much damage as the necromancer, so this is like the least damaging condimancer ever compared to the most glass cannon warrior ever.

Tick 1: 60% dead
Tick 2: 120% dead

Now I made those numbers up, but the point is, whatever the numbers actually are in reality, there's a big slice of DPS range where the results are about the same as far as time spent to kill the mob, and it takes a huge, absolutely huge, relative performance boost in raw damage that possibly doesn't exist in this game to make the killing signifcantly faster. Clearly there's a range where the results suffer and a range where they're better, but without looking at everything else in play we don't know where those ranges are.

Your stack DPS regardless paradigm is therefore simply flawed because the mechanics of the game allow for the possibility someone who does less damage may actually be just as high performing.

Furthermore even if we give your argument the best case scenario that everyone follows your paradigm, a DPS range where it just doesn't matter how much extra DPS you have will still emerge. If we take it to the ridiculous end and assume the warrior can kill it in half of an attack (ie he does double the damage the mob can sustain), the extra DPS is just that much more of a waste.

Finally, even if you think all the preceding is BS, we still can't quantify the effects of a loss in utility as a result of DPS stacking. I can't prove to you mathematically it isn't worth losing because it's not quantifiable, but that's still a valid opinion. You don't have to agree but the existence of another sound paradigm that may be more efficient than yours is certainly possible.

Dodge is great but you are really overstating it. Block, Daze, Blind, Knockback, Knockdown, Cripple or Immobilize, Stun, all just as effective when used properly. Dodge is what you use when you go "oops I either failed to or I simply can't Stun/Block/etc. this" moments because Dodge is your nearly universal counter, you want to save that for unexpected things.

C) You're coming from some hypothetical place where nothing ever goes wrong ever, nothing glitches, no one suddenly disconnects, nothing unexpected ever happens, nobody is new to that dungeon, no one fouls up, a cat never walks across the keyboard, etc. Everyone knows everything in the dungeon and times dodging perfectly and has no other form of defense.

You're missing the points that:

1. The benefit of doing something has to be worth the cost. If you spend 10% of game time in instanced PvE, it's not worth optimizing to that. If you spend 90% of your time in the dungeon however, you're a masochist, but you should probably optimize for it.

2. The proposal would in my mind be highly effective than having no strategy at all, of that I have no doubt, but there's other effective solutions. The cat that walked across the keyboard and wrecked your glass cannon party can be shorn of its epidermis in a variety of methods.

That is certainly a lot of typing, unfortunately it's mostly incoherent. This thread is about optimal warrior builds for dungeon/fractal content. What that has to do with necromancers and their condition damage dps, I have no idea. Clearly I have no problems with utility characters like Guardians and Mesmers in groups because the utility they provide acts as an offensive and defensive force multiplier.

JDogg126, on 11 February 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

In the end the OP might have been best aimed at a group of like-minded people like his guild instead of aiming it at the general population.

I'm aiming it at the people who post garbage builds here presenting them as top notch. And I was also aiming it at the people who come to the forums to find top notch builds and, due to their inexperience, get hoodwinked by the first group into running garbage builds. Hopefully that clears up the confusion.

Not sure if you've never run dungeons or what, but those are super simple examples which aren't realistic. There is never a point where there is too much dps, because in no realistic scenario are you going to kill any champion or legendary in 3-4 hits.

The spectrum is measured in time, i.e. 60 seconds at max dps, 180 seconds at terrible dps, or anywhere in between. The benefit of maximizing dps is whatever time you save for each boss in a dungeon, for every dungeon, every single day.

This is why some groups take 20 minutes to clear a dungeon, and some groups only take 10 minutes.

Let's take your very basic example and apply it to real bosses. In dungeons, bosses have million+ hp, that's why a 30k 100B by a warrior barely moves the health bar. 2 million hp is a safe average of a level 80 boss.

So if you had a optimal 1 guardian/3 warrior/1 mesmer group, you'd probably averaging around 32k dps as a group.

Now say the 3 warriors are running more tanky builds (or you are running other dps classes), so instead of 8k dps each, they are doing 5k dps each, so now the group is down to 23k dps.

So over the course of a normal boss fight, the difference 62.5s kill in an optimal group vs 87s. ~25s slower for each boss and a few seconds for each silver group adds up, especially for high hp bosses that exist.

The benefit is of course, the warriors are more "tanky" or have heals. But good groups don't need those because guardian does it better, so those heals are a waste. The more support and tank skills also hurt your playstyle because you use things (i.e. shouts) for survivability instead of constantly using them to further increase your dps at the start of fights and whenever the cooldown is up (or use banners instead of a 3rd shout because Discipline and Tactics are amazing).

In the end, that's why you get speed runs that seem so fast.

Granted this applies specifically for organized groups and dungeons. As someone who has run thousands of dungeons in only organized groups, there are people who only do dungeons and fractals 90% of the time, because that is the only challenging thing in PvE. Speed running and learning new ways to maximize efficiency is what some people enjoy because that's the "best" challenge PvE offers currently.

Now I'm not saying everyone needs to min-max and run a dps warrior, but that is what many organized groups do because it is fun to speed run things, and most of those people realize what a true optimal dungeon build is for warriors and that it is not only possible, but ideal, to run "glass" cannon warriors when you have a guardian anchor and the proper support skills from guardian and mesmer for instance.

Basically dungeons are a group activity, the groups that have figured out how to work together instead of trying to build balanced builds for all 5 slots are the one's that are the most efficient and have the easiest time in dungeons, part of that is knowing the dungeons and what to dodge as well though, it's not pure classes in this game since it is more twitch/action based.

Dodge is great but you are really overstating it. Block, Daze, Blind, Knockback, Knockdown, Cripple or Immobilize, Stun, all just as effective when used properly. Dodge is what you use when you go "oops I either failed to or I simply can't Stun/Block/etc. this" moments because Dodge is your nearly universal counter, you want to save that for unexpected things.

Umm, no. Using dodge is not an "Opps, I either failed to or I simply can't stun/block/etc."
No disrespect, but apparently you 1) do not play WvW in the front lines or 2) you play ranged in WvW, or 3) do not play WvW at all.

Dodge is way more than a frakin' "Opps, I made a mistake, etc." mechanism, be assured of that.

Dodge is great but you are really overstating it. Block, Daze, Blind, Knockback, Knockdown, Cripple or Immobilize, Stun, all just as effective when used properly. Dodge is what you use when you go "oops I either failed to or I simply can't Stun/Block/etc. this" moments because Dodge is your nearly universal counter, you want to save that for unexpected things.

I miss that one. Are you serious?? I'm just gonna give you a good example. A example that take a major part of my GW2 time presently. In my fractal group it seem that i'm doom to always get the Volcanic Fractal. How many time I was the one kiting the boss away from the death so other could rez them. Now can you explain how i'm suppose to keep my dodge only when i * something up when i need to not get hit by 1 single arrow from the boss when he shoot me 12 of those during a limited period of time. Daze, Knockback, Knockdown, immobilize or stun don't work against him. I need to get near him to blind him with my guardian (forget that i'm gonna be one shot by his AOE), i only have 1 block and i can have 2 Aegis during the time i kite it. This give me 3 block and i need to evade 12. Ya sure dodge is only a omg button. My Aegis is each 40s and my block have a 45s cooldown but i'm gonna keep the dodge that give me 2 evade each 20s or less with vigor only in special situation. That just don't make sense.

Relax. It is a GAME. It it meant to be played for FUN. I have to be efficient, organized and optimal AT WORK. GAME is NOT a JOB.

And who are you to decide what fun is? Fun for the OP and his guild means fast clears with optimal builds, figuring out how to get through content they have already cleared half a hundred times as quickly and efficiently as possible. Fun for some others might be slower clears with not so optimal builds, taking their time. Nowhere in here does he say that the latter is wrong, just that people shouldn't be posting up these suboptimal builds touting them as optimal.

I'm more in line with the OP's idea of fun. I like researching math and optimizing my character down to the last armor upgrade. It's not "work" for me, it's what I enjoy. What gives you the right to dictate that that's not ok?

TL;DR: Spec how you want, but don't try and pass off a build as "extreme damage" and "superior survivability" all in one package when you don't understand the basic math behind damage in game.

I'm aiming it at the people who post garbage builds here presenting them as top notch. And I was also aiming it at the people who come to the forums to find top notch builds and, due to their inexperience, get hoodwinked by the first group into running garbage builds. Hopefully that clears up the confusion.

Could you perhaps give a list of all of the builds you think are "garbage"? I think it would not only help to prove your point (Depending on your choices) but also increase people's understanding of the subject matter. I'm not asking you to look through all of the builds in this forum, but perhaps the most recent and popular (Over 30k views) builds?

I'd especially like to know exactly what builds you are calling garbage before I agree or disagree with your OP.

I really like the OP, very well written and it communicates (quite importantly) the "crowd" mentality, that because a build has a lot of views and replies "it must be good". There is too much conjecture, as you say. I'm a man of science, so terms like "high DPS" don't do it for me, it just doesn't mean anything because there is no frame of reference there. It's a longshot since it's an old thread but, when I wrote about Vigorous Shouts in a couple of posts, I made sure one of them was solely dedicated to crunching the numbers behind it, because it lets you really see what the build is capable of doing.

You especially hit the nail on the head with watering down builds to achieve "balance", quite ironically the very paradigm of GW2 moves away from Balance due to the non-existence of the Unholy Trinity. I hate to say it Brand, but this is exactly the kind of stuff I was saying about Sonic Boon, dropping points into Tactics for paltry heals just isn't worth it. I dropped out of that discussion so long ago because I just couldn't figure out why it continued to get so much attention.

I would perhaps disagree somewhat about your opinion on being Defensive in let's say higher level Fractals. I comfortably run a Dual Axe build using Omnomberry etc, and I specced into that after deciding my theorycrafting into Vigorous Shouts was rubbish. I realised latterly that I hated losing so much DPS, and that realistically it was important to endeavor to worry about my own survival and just cut things to ribbons.

However, I recently specced back into my old Vigorous Shouts build for high Fractals (Cleric's with Mace/Shield), and I think there is some use there. Bear with me on what I'm about to say but, we don't know *exactly* how aggro mechanics work, however there appears to some limited evidence that the person who initiates a fight tends to draw attention, as well as some relation to high toughness and/or health. Running this build gets me a lot of enemy attention, and running a Mace Shield setup allows frequent blocking in addition to your dodges. By blocking you maintain enemy attention longer, since if you dodge he might just move on to someone else, so by solely occupying a boss yourself, it alleviates pressure on your Glassy teammates. Likewise let it be noted I spec'd full into the Healing side of it, so allies are healed upwards of 2.3k per shout.

I tend to run my fractals with a Ranger, Thief and Ele (all Glass Cannon) and a Guardian. I understand what you're saying about how "Glass Cannon stops working at 40" is a Fallacy, and you're correct, but the conditions are pretty steep, since nobody can dodge everything. At least from my own experience, swapping into a defensive build greatly assisted the overall stability of the team.

You especially hit the nail on the head with watering down builds to achieve "balance", quite ironically the very paradigm of GW2 moves away from Balance due to the non-existence of the Unholy Trinity. I hate to say it Brand, but this is exactly the kind of stuff I was saying about Sonic Boon, dropping points into Tactics for paltry heals just isn't worth it. I dropped out of that discussion so long ago because I just couldn't figure out why it continued to get so much attention.

Cue the greatest mystery of the PvE Warrior forum, hahaha.

Just one of many great posts in this thread though. Can we get this stickied or something?

Could you perhaps give a list of all of the builds you think are "garbage"? I think it would not only help to prove your point (Depending on your choices) but also increase people's understanding of the subject matter. I'm not asking you to look through all of the builds in this forum, but perhaps the most recent and popular (Over 30k views) builds?

I'd especially like to know exactly what builds you are calling garbage before I agree or disagree with your OP.

What an intellectually dishonest position to hold. You're essentially saying that you agree with my theory, but you will change your opinion on it based on whether or not I like your build personally. Grow up.

What an intellectually dishonest position to hold. You're essentially saying that you agree with my theory, but you will change your opinion on it based on whether or not I like your build personally. Grow up.

No, it has nothing to do with my build, but the builds you are calling trash on the whole. For example, if you were to say that all builds are garbage besides Glass Cannon builds, I would disagree with you. If you put in several builds that I agreed were garbage, or perhaps even my own, I would still agree with you on the whole, though I might disagree about your opinion of my build.

Thank you for immediately assuming something I never said and insulting me though.

There seems to be a recurring theme of people being overly sensitive to comments and taking offense when they aren't necessarily aimed at them. This thread is a great opportunity to have a very frank discussion about Warrior builds, and there are posters in this thread who are doing the subject immeasurable justice and I have enjoyed reading your posts. Sadly there are others just throwing poorly supported numbers to try and prove a point.

No, it has nothing to do with my build, but the builds you are calling trash on the whole. For example, if you were to say that all builds are garbage besides Glass Cannon builds, I would disagree with you. If you put in several builds that I agreed were garbage, or perhaps even my own, I would still agree with you on the whole, though I might disagree about your opinion of my build.

Thank you for immediately assuming something I never said and insulting me though.

I would prefer not to make it personal by mentioning specific players or builds. You're a smart guy, I'm sure you can figure whether or not I am referring to you.

Lastly, I didn't insult you. I felt your perspective was intellectually dishonest, and I told you so. You clarified your statement, and I have responded to your clarification. Done deal.

When I first hit 80, i tried to be everything to everyone. I had clerics gear on my warrior.

Then I realized that all the support I was creating was really just weakening my teams, and myself. Fights were taking too long. The amount of healing i was doing was not making up for the inevitable mistakes incurred by fights taking longer.

Then I switched to a more straight forward build. Dungeons went faster, runs were easier.

I realized I am playing a warrior, not a guardian. Guardians are better at being a guardian than warriors are. Warriors are better at being warriors.

So, you call builds posted on guru 'garbage', yet you lack the courage to tell us which ones. Yeah...

From the OP:
"Is a Warrior with 30 Tactics for shout heals, or for maximizing Rune of Lyssa, providing significantly more team utility with their FGJ and OMM than a generic 25/25/0/0/20 DPS build? I would argue not. They are giving away between 25-30% DPS (my estimate) for an immeasurably small amount of team utility in case of the shout build, and in the case of boon stacking, for a minor amount of Vitality. This is not a worthy trade off, in either case."

IMO it is pretty obvious what builds he is talking about, just because he doesnt want to single people out by name doesnt mean a thing (besides exactly that).